


years built on dust

by xinteng



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Jongdae’s Birthday Week 2020, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Third Person, Unhappy Ending, Whump, happy birthday jongdae i love you, tinysparks round 7, whump!jongdae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26375977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xinteng/pseuds/xinteng
Summary: To Jongdae, it feels like they’ve always been inseparable—Jongdae and Yixing, Yixing and Jongdae. There isn’t a before, just like how to Jongdae, there isn’t an after, there is just the two of them, indelibly intertwined.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Zhang Yi Xing | Lay
Comments: 24
Kudos: 34
Collections: Challenge #7 — Out of Order





	years built on dust

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is based loosely on the concept of _this is how you lose her_ by junot díaz, though i haven't actually read the collection of short stories so any similarities in plot are purely coincidental.
> 
> written for round 7 of tinysparks.

This is how he leaves.

The affair is quiet—there is no crying, and no screaming. He doesn’t take much (there hadn’t been much to begin with), and yet when Jongdae looks around his apartment, he only sees the spaces that have been left behind, the empty shapes around which dust has collected. Soon those spots will be filled as well, he thinks, with its own thin layer of dust, and it’ll be like he was never there. He can’t bear the thought.

Vaguely, Jongdae wonders when, exactly, he had managed to lock himself into a cage and given Yixing the only key.

+

He doesn’t know how to go back to before. Before him. To Jongdae, it feels like they’ve always been inseparable—Jongdae and Yixing, Yixing and Jongdae. There isn’t a _before_ , just like how to Jongdae, there isn’t an _after_ , there is just the two of them, indelibly intertwined.

He wonders if that’s how Yixing sees it as well.

He supposes not.

+

“This is for you,” are the words that Yixing says to him at work, sliding a viciously red hued envelope across the desk, ink stained dark on the paper.

He had heard about it, of course, as he had stood by the coffee machine earlier in the morning waiting for his shitty brew to finish, Chanyeol and Sehun talking about it in hushed voices—or at least, what they thought were hushed voices—as Junmyeon shot him worried looks from his perch across the room. He smiles—he’s always been good at keeping his own secrets—at them, and if his hands tremble a little as he pours milk into his shitty coffee, they’re too nice to say anything about it.

He looks up at Yixing, who is still watching him carefully, and reaches out to teasingly push him a little. His fingers smooth across the soft fabric stretched tightly across his chest. “Thought I’d never get mine,” he jokes. Warmth seeps into his fingertips and he retracts his hand quickly, burned.

Something twists viciously in his gut when Yixing gives him a soft smile in return, all too familiar dimples coming out in full force. “You know what they say,” he says, “best for last.” He shrugs. “I saved you for last,” he continues, and if that’s a joke, Jongdae thinks it a particularly cruel one.

+

The thing is, before Jongdae and Yixing, there was Yixing and Yifan.

The thing is, after Jongdae and Yixing, there is still Yixing and Yifan.

+

“You’re really going to marry him,” he slurs into the phone, a night when he’s had too much to drink and it feels like the night is eating him whole. He welcomes the darkness, sinks into its embrace. _He doesn’t deserve you,_ he thinks, but he still has enough presence of mind to keep that thought locked tightly away. _He is rough lines and teeth bared where you are tender skin and soft eyed, and you will give and give and give and he will take, take, take. He will hurt you—not on purpose, no, but with his callous words and stubborn mouth—and you will become another careless casualty of his war. He will try to offer you the world when you have always wanted to claim it on your own, and he will risk you in his greed to hold the both of you in his hand._

Bile churns in his stomach and he presses the palm of his hand to his mouth, barely making it in time to the bathroom, heaving into the toilet. Tears sting his eyes and his head spins.

He hears his phone beep from where he left it behind in the living room—

He ignores it.

+

He sees them at work—Yifan comes to pick up Yixing for lunch breaks every other day, and the smile that Yixing gives him is too familiar in a heartbreaking way. Their honeymoon is planned for Hawaii, he overhears from Baekhyun, whose voice carries through the walls, and Jongdae can’t help but imagine Yixing getting tanned on the beach, sun glazing his fair skin and giving him faint freckles, like the time they had gone to see the ocean and they had both gotten sunburned on their cheeks, and Jongdae had looked into the horizon as the sun set, Yixing gripping his hand tightly, and realized that he loved him.

+

This is how you lose him.

He picks out a ring—something small and simple and hides it in the drawer of his desk. He doesn’t have a speech planned, but he thinks he knows what to say, regardless. Paranoia makes him begin carrying the ring around in his pocket at all times, not wanting Yixing to accidentally stumble upon it. For weeks, he waits for the perfect moment, and when Yixing finally has the day off, they plan a day out. The question is there, in the back of his throat, waiting to spill out—and then, purely by chance, they run into Yifan.

When he watches Yixing with Yifan, he understands. Jongdae knows Yixing loves him. But Yixing loves Yifan as well, and the two of them are like revolving stars, orbiting each other in a devastating course destined for collision. 

The ring burns in his pocket.

Jongdae lets him go.

+

This is the beginning. 

His hand idly traces up Yixing’s side, counting the notches in his spine, the indents of his ribs, watching avidly as goosebumps rise in his wake. He leans in, presses his lips against the softness of the crevice of his collarbone, savoring the sweetness of night and Yixing’s blissful warmth. Jongdae pulls him closer, and feels his own heartbeat quicken, then steady out to match Yixing’s. Distantly, he thinks that his heart will never be able to beat again on its own, now that it knows what it is like to be whole.

He closes his eyes, and he dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> :)
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/staryxz)  
> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/yixingzhang)


End file.
